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Queen's Park to Vote on "Putting Students First Act"

Posted By: Michelle Rosa · 9/10/2012 5:39:00 AM

Controversial anti-strike legislation that reins in wages and cuts benefits for Ontario teachers will come to a vote early this week.

The minority Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives are teaming up in the legislature to pass the anti-strike bill, which has angered unions and civil libertarians. The Liberals brought back the legislature early to get it passed before Sept. 1, saying the province couldn't afford the rollover of old contracts. However, since the proposed legislation is retroactive to that date, it would claw back any pay hikes or benefits once it becomes law.

The New Democrats, who oppose the bill, say the Liberals wanted to create a crisis in education that they thought would benefit them in two byelections last week.

The Liberals held on to the riding of Vaughan, but came in third in Kitchener-Waterloo, denying them a majority government.

(The Canadian Press)

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  1. Earl posted on 09/10/2012 08:58 AM
    Read "Putting Students First Act" as "Putting Students Last Act" as inversion is the naming convention of our times...

    So Mr,. Hudak should GROW A PAIR and OPPOSE THIS ACT on the very simple basis that it is being used to violate legal agreements nee contracts made with the entities involved.

    Mr. Hudak is absolutely correct and I fully support union opt-out legislation, which this is not. This is sick-in-your-eye legislation no less.

    How does starting a war with the unions "Put Students First"? Utter nonsense.

    Hudak by voting for this is saying it is okay to go back on your word. The contracts between entities are their word. Way to go pal you just joined the McGuinty camp permanently. Mind you, that may be the camp you need to be in to be elected by the idiots here in Ontario. It is like the Maple Leafs - the stupid public buys whatever garbage they are sold!
  2. Richard Collins posted on 09/10/2012 09:18 AM
    I'm of the opinion that any piece of legislation that restricts what unions can do and when they can do it is a positive development, building a stronger and stronger precedent for the day when we finally get those thugs out of our lives and regain some honesty and accountability in our workforce. For Mr Hudak to oppose the bill just because McGuinty brought it forward would be juvenile, like a three-year-old saying "No" to everything and anything, as it still serves the end goal.
    1. Earl posted on 09/10/2012 12:25 PM
      @Richard Collins Agree with limiting union "powers". But going about so in violation of good-faith binding legal agreements the government made is pure dishonest filth. No surprise in that and the politicians who are often lawyers wonder why they have a bad reputation in terms of honesty and respect in the community? Give me a break!

      I hope to hell it passes and the teachers union, which has more money on balance than this have-not (thanks, McGuinty) province, sues the province to the stone age.

      The honest approach may be to negotiate a new agreement again in good faith whilst in parallel developing legislation to change union powers in future.

      We need right-to-work legislation allowing complete opt-out from unions. Employers should never be forced to hire union (nee Mafia) workers nor should workers be forced to have anything to do with unions.

      We need legislation that forces unions to use 100% of funding for employees' direct benefit, not for political purposes, not to promote social causes. The purpose of unions and their worth to members is ostensibly the ability to negotiate collectively achieving some parity in working conditions and benefits. That day is long gone, I am sure a careful analysis of union funding would be quite revealing.
  3. proton posted on 09/10/2012 09:31 AM
    my concern is that after two years the union will press for, and the gov't in power, if Liberal or NDP will accept, to increase wages to make up for this freeze and removing those sick days. The Conservatives are likely the only ones with the intelligence to understand this province is heading to ruin unless we rein in this orgy of spending
    1. MichaelP posted on 09/11/2012 09:18 AM
      @proton sick days aren't coming back. Little reason to think that the Conservatives have any more intelligence than the other parties. They all seem equally clueless.
  4. StuG posted on 09/10/2012 11:00 AM
    as an independent ill be really freakin peed at both the Liberals and conservatives if they continue to waste our tax dollars with impending court challenges.
    How will court challenges from labour help our province?
    They will win it in a court of law if they follow up challenges to legislation freeze without fair bargaining. why I favor binding arbitration. People have and always will have a constitutional right to labour bargaining. What is it that some don't understand on that??
    Who's going to continue to grow in popularity is the NDP. Playing right into their hands.
  5. Hank posted on 09/10/2012 12:28 PM
    Consider something here. A fine point,but a point nonetheless.

    Some teachers got step raises as of September 1. These are not gratuitous, they reflect additional levels of experience and qualification. A financial analyst, or a welder, or even a janitor, knows more about their job after 5 years than 4, or after 10 years than 1, and is worth being paid more.

    However, this law would apparently retroactively take back money from these teachers. Only for a week, but still. How would you like it if your boss came along and said "Hey, we cut your salary for last week retroactively?" Would that be fair?

    Whether the province has the money for a certain level of compensation, what a fair wage for teachers is, I don't pretend to know. What I do know is that the teachers have a right to bargain, not to have a contract imposed on them. If the school boards want to offer the government's "offer" let them do so, and if the teachers don't like it, they can do as they please - teach or not teach. The teachers have already offered a 2-year wage freeze and 2 years of inflation-only raises.
    1. MichaelP posted on 09/11/2012 09:17 AM
      @Hank the catholic and french board agreed to deals that allowed teachers to move up the grid. This is about a new union leader trying to make a point. The teachers are stuck in this silly scrap.
  6. Race you to the bottom! posted on 09/10/2012 10:28 PM
    While focusing on the drawbacks (real and percieved) of organized labour, many workers in our society are completely unaware of the benefits we all enjoy in our work force, the rights we now enjoy, which have been fought for, and paid for in blood at times, by union workers in the province and the entire Western world over the last century.

    Consider ending child labour, limiting the length of the work day and the work week, disability benefits, health and safety legislation to protect the lives and bodies of workers, and the increases in pay and standards of living that we have enjoyed in North America since the end of the Second World War. These have been earned in great part by the unionized workers and shared with all. Read a few history books on work conditions in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and you'll understand why a holiday is in order (Labour Day, people?)

    To limit unions, particularly to allow employees to opt out of unions and allow employers to hire only unionized employees, would be to remove an important (if imperfect) control on the balance of power in our society. It is probably the greatest threat to the middle class in our current times. Though it may sound like it now, I'm not a communist. Union workers who are abusing these securities and rights which have been earned for them should be removed from their unions and workplaces due to the disrepect they show as they flaunt the rights others have struggled to gain. Laziness, bullying and sabotage in workplaces need to be dealt with severely, in a fair and non-arbitrary way.

    Remove unions from society, and we will enter ourselves in a race to the bottom of a very large pile, as working conditions and compensation plummet, along with the standard of living. Stand up for the middle class. Stand up for your rights as an employee.
    1. Richard Collins posted on 09/11/2012 07:41 AM
      @Race you to the bottom! Every benefit you've mentioned is protected now by legislation that no party would dare to touch, as it would be political suicide. As soon as whichever party is in power at the time writes any particular holiday out of existence, all the opposition will need to say to get the votes on their side would be to promise it's reinstatement.

      While it's true that the unions of old fought to bring us those benefits to begin with, that has no bearing at all on what to do about the bloated, corrupt unions of today. Unions today are only interested in acquiring more members, making their union heads richer, and keeping their names in the papers. They don't care a whit about "the little guy" that they pretend to stand up for; just look at the Summer Garbage Strike, or the York Region Transit strike that prevented 40,000 low-income, bus-dependent people from going to work, school, or medical appointments. If anything, they are more corrupt and malevolent than the "big mean corporations" they despise so much.

      We can't keep catering to these criminals out of a misplaced sense of tradition. Think of the unions as a cast on a broken arm: they had a clear purpose back when they were needed, but the arm has healed now and the cast is simply in the way. It's time to cut the cast off, throw it on the fire, and move on with our lives.

      http://www.tinyurl.com/we-can-advance
    2. StuG posted on 09/11/2012 09:50 AM
      @Race you to the bottom! absolutely! hence why it's a constitutional right Canadians have to collective bargaining. I'm not in a union but the anti union bunch i would be safe to bet are probably white angry middle aged people with an agenda. Usually that agenda is a selfish look at society where they feel others especially minorities are somehow not worthy of trying to build a better life for themselves and their families in a expensive city like Toronto and surrounding.
      The old cliche with these people is don't raise my taxes, cut the services i don't use but keep the services i use and don't charge me for more for them!!!
      If we don't have a robust society and economy where people make a good decent wage have good benefits for themselves and family pay their fair share of taxes, be able to buy things to keep the economy robust then who will pay for health care and things like that for when we are all older?
      Always stand up for the middle class. Always stand for what is right and just for the working man and woman.
      Why Canada is a great country built by people coming here to build a better life for themselves and family and share the burden with us all
  7. proton posted on 09/11/2012 11:01 AM
    @StuG I don't believe your target are against workers making a good living. They've worked for it and deserve it. You perhaps don't understand the anger is directed towards waste, inefficiency and politicians hijacking taxpayers money to serve their own interest. In case you don't realize that affects ALL taxpayers.

    Why should public union members be paid vastly more than the private sector? We have laws in place to protect workers for decent wages, protection both legal and physical. Private sector needs to make a profit and they can't if they don't attract good workers and pay them a fair wage. Where does gov't get off competing against that when they have unlimited funds to pay whatever they want in order to hopefully get elected?

    It's not a level playing field and can be detrimental to the health of business. This is the case any time gov't is competing against the private sector.

    In case you haven't figured it out yet it's the middle class that gets screwed because they're paying higher taxes to fund this inefficiency. The wealthy remain wealthy and the very poor remain very poor.

    One day Canadians will wake up and realize the middle class loses the most as a result of the fiscal inefficiency our governments run.

    If you want a nanny state move to Greece, Portugal, etc. where their economies are in a shambles.
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